


Belonging

by Hannidae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Because I need indulgence, Canon Compliant, Canon Temporary Character Death, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Just another Bringing Ben Back, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey's lightsaber reveal, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Sweet cream, World Between Worlds, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21967423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannidae/pseuds/Hannidae
Summary: There are new worlds to be built and the universe conspires.Rey doesn’t need to be alone anymore.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 50
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I. The Burial of the Dead
> 
> April is the cruellest month, breeding  
> Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  
> Memory and desire, stirring  
> Dull roots with spring rain.  
> ...
> 
> - _The Waste Land_ by T.S. Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between the Battle of Exegol and Rey's visit to Tatooine.

The warbling of the jungle’s birds rose with dawn. Rey woke to the sound as it echoed in the space around her where she lay alone. She inhaled deeply, feeling for the Force which had kept watch for her—waiting for a presence while she slept. 

“Enough,” she told herself, pressing his name back into the night’s hours. The dreams of fingers glancing across her brow couldn't be. He was gone.

She sat up, still in the clothes she had collapsed in the night before. After wiping stray tears from her eyes she glanced at the time. Finn would be by soon.

Thirty-four days had passed since Exegol. She'd been recording them with the calligraphy brushes and bound paper Leia had left behind. The Resistance’s remaining numbers on Ajan Kloss had begun to dwindle. There was almost nothing left to do, with the First Order shredded and falling through the cracks. Rey found herself watching people pace more than she had ever seen before, but she ground on through the endless line of things to salvage, repair, and build. Just waiting and watching.

For that, it was the first time in her life that she was able to just watch. And instead of a dull ache, waiting felt somehow free. And hollow.

Hollow in the Force where someone she would have never expected to have either had or lost should have been.  
She knew about the human condition of ghost limbs, but it was infinitely inadequate to describe the sensation of his absence. Every thought, movement, and word left a faint echo in an imprint that walked and slept beside her. But the imprint was empty, and the closer she looked, the deeper the chasm.

She put her hand on the empty space of the cot by her side. Despite the instinct of a presence that had always been there, a radiant warmth at the back of her mind and a peripheral shadow she had known most of her life, she felt nothing anymore. It was gone. And so she did everything she could to ignore that hollow. One day she would let herself mourn, but not now. She had dragged that resilience with her through the sand and wreckage for long enough to know how to keep waiting.

There was at least someone still here for her. Finn. Despite everything, he stilled looked at her the same way. She was grateful for that. 

And he was on his way. A pooling glow ascending the steps to the nest of mechanical implements, flowers, and Jedi texts that was her place in this world.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she smiled at him, grateful for the constant reassurance in his breezy smile. “I’m ready.”

Rey rose and followed him down the spiraling path of soil and underbrush, past the _Tantive IV_ and to the mess tables. She returned the polite nods and glances made her way, and tried to ignore the step back people took if she got too close. 

Speeches had been made and broadcasted after the Battle of Exegol, and she had said a small piece. But she had only spoken for Leia. Of her strength. She'd said nothing about herself. When Poe asked her for an official report of happened on the ground at Exegol she had only said, without detail, that Palpatine and Kylo Ren had died. When pressed, she pressed back. So Poe's official recounting to the public was scant with details of Sith or Jedi. She knew a legal summons would come from the Core at some point, needing those details, but she would wait for it.

Since the yet unexplained deaths of Palpatine and Kylo Ren - _Ben_ \- the mystery had created a bubble around her. People stayed outside that bubble. But the social barrier would be there one way or another, and she'd rather there be nothing else to whisper about, so she gave them nothing else to say.

“Hey, Rey,” Poe and Rose chimed at her as she sat next to Chewie, who rumbled and wrapped an arm around her. Finn passed her a portion packet, which she unwrapped with the same careful delicacy as in all those years where every crumb was precious. BB-8 trilled and rolled to her side where he hummed contentedly. D-0, as always, hovering beside BB-8.

Poe turned to Rose, a crease in his brow and the angles of his face softer than usual, “Are you still leaving today?” 

Rose nodded, her eyes briefly skimming Finn’s before answering, “Yes, but just for a few days or so.” She had been waiting to go back to to Hays Minor since the Battle of Crait. To say good-bye properly to her sister, Paige.

“You sure you don't want me to go?" Rey asked. Rose shouldn’t have to be alone for this.

Rose turned, gratitude gleaming on her face, but shook her head, “No-thank you, guys. It means so much. But I’d rather do this on my own.”

Rose had become a brightly burning flame over the last year. She had told Rey about how things had been between her and Paige. How afraid she had been to lose her sister for so long, and how she initially thought that the loss had imploded something inside of her. But something new and green had taken root there."

“Have you thought more about building your own lightsaber?” Rose asked, her voice casual but her eyes searching. She knew Rose had seen the change in her. Rey had always been quiet, but never this reserved. This hollow. But Rose but had never pried.

Rey’s breath caught with the stark reaction her diaphragm made to the question, but smiled at Rose. The idea of building her own saber had felt so ephemeral, unnecessary. Like her life, as purposeful as the haze and clouds passing over the jungle. She wasn’t opposed, but inclination was certainly lacking.

Regardless, she'd made a promise. If not to herself, to Leia. There were things to be done. Whatever they were.

She nodded briefly to Rose, determine to make some effort to meet the expectations of a Jedi. Finn clipped in, always there to let her know how much he cared, “Yes! Let’s do it.”

"I think it's time you guys took a break," Poe added. "You've done enough. And we're still waiting for things to pull back together." 

“Excellent!” Beaumont gushed, ever the exuberant academic. “I think one of the best places to look, since Ilum is gone, is Lothal. There was a Jedi temple in the northwestern plains—I believe the temple is almost entirely gone, but it’s said to be built above a cave system where there are known collections of Kyber crystals.”

The prospect of going somewhere new quivered inside her like moth wings. She clamped down on the feeling, not ready yet to let herself feel enticed, not after what had been lost. But she breathed in, willing the Force to settle within and around her, and nodded with tightly woven vertebrae to Beau and Finn. She would do this for them. 

Chewie’s low voice reverberated beside her, and she touched her hand to the arm he had draped around her shoulder, glad he would come. Of everyone, he was the most steady reassurance. Life moves on. 

BB-8 chirped plaintively at Poe, who grinned affectionately and nodded, “It’s not like I can stop you.” D-0 cruised a droopy circle around BB-8, his gravely voice bright, “adventure.”

“I know I don’t need to tell you but be careful out there,” Poe said. “We’ve been getting comms from syndicate thugs and wackos that they have it in for you. Like they’re trying to prove themselves.”

“Ha. Against Rey? Scum,” Finn responded, and Chewie concurred.

It wasn't a surprise, but still jarring to hear Poe say this-- after everything. But she knew the draw of a myth. She had never settled on what that would have meant for her. As a Jedi. What it meant now.

But this was the nebula that had become her new home. A mess of dark matter and stars’ dust. Unformed and isolated. A place of waiting.

That she had met the people she had and done the things she’d done— it still felt as surreal as those dark places of mirrors and visions. Perhaps she’d wake up again to the corroded walls and scratch-marks counting the days of Jakku’s vacant loneliness, surrounded by the desert instead of the Force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it feels right please do let me know.  
> If it's missing something I'm always open to constructive feedback. Seriously.  
> If it's obvious that I never stop editing meanwhile making new mistakes, I'm so sorry.
> 
> I'm [hannidae](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hannidae) on Tumblr and hannidae_ on Twitter if you ever need a ramble buddy.
> 
> I will be dabbling with the World Between Worlds/Chain Worlds theorem-- for theories on how Rey might use it to find Ben, which compiles a lot of the same sources I used, check out [this amazing explanation](https://tcookies.tumblr.com/post/190025831787/here-is-all-the-possible-evidence-i-could-find-on) by [TCOOKIES777](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22224436/chapters/53064430)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...  
> "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;  
> "They called me the hyacinth girl."  
> –Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  
> Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not  
> Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither  
> Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,  
> Looking into the heart of light, the silence.  
> ...
> 
> - _The Waste Land_ by T.S. Eliot

“Ready?” Finn’s expression was luminous as Rey and her entourage of droids made their way to him, her haversack slung over her shoulder and packed with both volumes of the Aionomica and notes from Beau. Chewie was already at the _Falcon_ , tenderly tweaking the flux stabilizer before their departure. At this point he was just doting, having worked devotedly the last few weeks to make every repair the old ship could desire. Poe was waiting with Finn, bantering around the topic of future, which they had both been carefully avoiding discussing lately, apart from operational logistics. 

Finn had dropped a careful inquiry to her a couple of times about where they would be heading next, entirely safe in the conviction he would go with her. Her lack of an answer hadn’t phased Finn, but she knew Poe was struggling without knowing. He always needed a plan and was ready to move on. 

She once might have happily joined the New Republic’s Navy with him and the others. Spending her days as a pilot and behind an engineering board. Creating, testing, and refining. Learning the bright, buzzing worlds in the core. And she knew Finn would be glad for it. But she saw no future there, and the imagining felt fully a light and flimsy daydream. Bitterness shadowing the saccharine.

So then what? If she was the last Jedi, she was certainly ill-connected and under prepared to change that situation.

“Ready,” she said, stepping up to them. Poe nodded, grinning at her with with a crisp flash of white teeth. He had changed some since she had met him. Becoming more defined, and some of the more jagged edges smoothing. His decisions had edged toward more predictable and balanced. The weight of the responsibility given to him an effective chisel. He had been increasingly professional, methodical and patient since Exegol. Tempered. It was good, now that he and Finn were offered the names of General and sought after in the Core. But he was still the spicy stream of quicksilver that was Poe.

“Good-bye hug?” Poe asked, swinging his arms around both of them before waiting for a reply. “Oh, Finn—what were you going to say to Rey in those sinking fields on Pasaana?”

Finn rolled his eyes, chuffing in the exasperation devotedly cultivated by Poe, “considering I still haven’t told Rey, you’ll have to wait.”

Poe sighed deeply, dramatically, “You don’t love me, do you? You were going to tell Rey you love her, but not me.”

Finn laughed and patted Poe’s stubbled cheek, “Of course I do. And Rey. But that’s not what I was going to say. Maybe I’ll tell you after I talk to her about it.”

“Thrilling though it is, watching you two do this, shall we get going?,” she pressed as Chewie joined them, stowing a magnaspanner in his tool bag. 

“Take care of everyone,” she said to Poe, while BB-8 nudged D-O up the entry ramp. “And tell Rose we’ll be back soon if she returns before us.” Leaving felt unnecessary. Almost a theatrical performance. No one needed for her to find a kyber crystal.

After the jump to hyperspace was calculated and set, and Chewie had ambled off to the crew quarters, Rey swiveled in her chair to face Finn. “What was that about with Poe?” She remembered that moment on Pasaana and felt a shudder of guilt that she hadn’t thought to bring it up with him again. She'd spent too much time lost in herself.

“Oh,” Finn hesitated, his eyes sweeping back and forth over the display monitor. “I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while. We were just busy. And then after Leia…” he winced, almost imperceptibly, and glanced at her while he sought his next words. 

She hadn’t discussed Leia’s death with him—not because she didn’t want to, but because she was still trying to understand the implications of it. What it meant when she felt Leia’s body dissipate into the Force, calm and quiet as rain absorbing into the ground. Like Luke. Unlike the void that had opened behind her sternum for _him_. The Rammahgon hadn’t given her any conclusions to draw, despite its tales and precepts detailing the ancient history of the relationship between life and the Force.

Rey nodded at him, trying arrange her expression into something reassuring. 

He took a breath and continued, “I think I’m Force sensitive.”

She smiled and reached a hand to him, which he took in his own. It was so warm. “I know,” she said, “I’ve just been waiting for you to see it on your own. I didn’t want to push you.”

“You could tell?”

“Yes. I could feel it.”

“I know it,” he said, his voice light and speculative. “The same with you. I realized when we were on Exegol, something changed with you. Like it felt you were... gone. And then you weren't.” 

She studied him. The honesty plain in his face, the trust. 

Like air she had been trying to hold under water, the words abruptly slipped and climbed their way, clawing, out of her. 

“I died on Exegol.” 

She paused, searching his eyes for risk, but seeing only the solid truth of Finn.

She didn’t know if he was ready to hear about Ben. She wasn't, would never be, ready to talk about what she'd lost. But it was time for someone to know what he had done for her. 

“Palpatine was so strong. He almost killed me and Ben Solo. Ben had turned. And he came to Exegol. To help me.” She ignored Finn's inhalation and plunged on into the release. “Without Ben I wouldn’t have be able to… Somehow I was able to reflect Palpatine’s attempt to kill me. And then I died.” 

Tears had started streaming hot slices down her cheeks. Finn reached to wipe them. It felt mangled that Ben had been there with her almost as long as Finn had, and Finn knew almost nothing about it. 

She hadn’t told anyone but Leia about the bond, _the dyad_ , or of her conversations with her son. Leia had been reserved, but Rey had seen her trying to contain her hope. How hard it was for her, the strongest person she had ever heard of. 

After the Battle of Crait, Rey couldn’t conscientiously offer any more confidence to Leia that Ben might be turned. And in the absence that confidence grew caustic resentment. But that was only the film that covered the pool of solitude and yearning that filled her lungs, quivering with each breath. He had known her. He had wanted her.  
A person who knew abandonment as totally as her. Who somehow, despite every incongruence, every opposite, had fit her. She had seen so many flashes of light and hope in him. Stars in the night, each a promise of potential.

And now that he was gone so were those stars.

“Ben gave everything he had left to bring me back.”

Inhaling, she looked up to see Chewie, standing just outside of the bulkhead door. D-O rocking at his ankles. He held her gaze for a long, quiet moment, then murmured a whine, low and plaintive. She’d tell more to him about it later. He deserved to know everything about Ben.

She repositioned and swept her hands over her face. “I’m so sorry, Finn. This should have been about you, not me.”

“No, no, no.” He said, reaching forward and enveloping her with his arms. “I’m so glad you told me.”

She let him hold her in silence; all the words were spent. The hollow they left was dim and still. She could feel Finn’s agitation at the mention of Ben, a rare, dark flare diffusing from his center. But he didn’t press further, and she was grateful. 

Sitting back, she withdrew and cleared her eyes. She still had Finn. And Chewie. She looked toward him and he nodded gently at her before retreating back into the ship’s belly.

Now. Finn.

“How do you feel about it? The Force?” Her first knowledge of its presence on Takodana had split the ground beneath her and pushed every horizon farther. But it had brought so much as well.

“I have no idea. I don’t know what to do with it, or if I even should.” He paused, deliberating, “I’m not like you.”

She held his gaze, searching for the distance that had grown between her and every other person who had learned what she could do with the myth that was real. That distance wasn’t there in him, just humility. And she didn’t know how to respond, because it was true. He wasn’t the grandchild of a monster.

Would that change the way he saw her? Her grotesque relation to Palpatine? Would that color his impression of what Ben had done for her? She should have already told him. But she was just making this about herself again. This was about Finn.

“Finn, you’re amazing. And what you decide to do about the Force is entirely up to you. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to because of it. It doesn’t need to change anything.”

He smiled, a trace of relief spreading through him. “Okay. I just see how hard you’ve worked and how much it means to you.”

“If there’s ever anything about it that I can help with, show you—I’ll do whatever I can. Though I certainly don't know much.”

“There’s really that much to it?” He said this not with doubt, but wonder. His gaze grew distant as she nodded. She let him hold the ponderous silence, turning to watch the flowing mirages of hyperspace beyond the transparisteel window panels.

“Leia had it but chose not to become a Jedi?” 

She turned back to him. His curiosity illuminated from the radiant glow outside the ship.

“Yes. She still used the Force in many ways. It’s part of what made her such a brilliant strategist and politician. She trained with Luke for a while, then decided to give it up when she found out she would have a son.” _Ben._

_She had to stop. It was too painful._

Finn nodded deliberately, taking a few quiet breaths before responding. “I can't begin to imagine how much it would change things to be a Jedi. How people would see you differently.” 

She knew he meant the distinction and separation it created. Not the admiration. She smiled wearily and tipped her head in assent.

“But if I decided to try one day, would you teach me?”

“Of course.”

His relief and indecision created a charming expression. A fish lifted from then returned to water. She smiled with the gleam of adoration she felt for him and she took his hand one more time. 

.

For the rest of the trip Rey accepted Chewie's proposal of a game of dejarik. Finn nearly lost it once he saw Chewie wouldn't cheat with her. When she won Chewie swore it had nothing to do with his loyalty.

Eventually, the navi-computer began blaring arrival. Rey returned with Chewie to the cockpit and guided power to the sub-space hyperdrive engines. Lothal appeared before them, and she sighed in relish at the exquisite strokes of amber, silver, and cerulean that painted it. They landed in a sprawling prairie of bronze and ochre feather-grasses under a cloudless sky. It was comforting, like the desert she had grown up in, but poured with life beneath the canopy of the grassland.

She followed her friends down the loading ramp and shivered to inhale the fragrance of soil and sunlight after the recycled air on the ship. 

D-O simply said, "pretty," but Chewie mumbled about the emptiness of the landscape. .

“This feels like the right place,” she said to him, glancing around to orient herself the with flow of energy. The waves emanating from a point near them were powerful and consistent, like the tide on Ahch-To. She wondered whether the concentration of the Force was present before or as a result of the Jedi temple’s construction.

“The crystals--they're underground in caves, right?” Finn asked, considering the waves of grass and hills with narrowed eyes. He loved to hone his focus on his missions, still.

BB-8 chirped curiously.

“Yeah. We just need to find a way in.” She turned to the droids, "you guys stay here. It might be rough-going." 

Both droids lowered their heads in a dejected plea, but she only smiled and waved them back into the ship.

A soprano howl carried to them on the breeze, then a chorus.

Rey turned, feeling a presence approaching them quickly from the north. Forms of silver and pewter sliced elegantly through the grass. Stunning animals with sleek fur, and long legs, tails, and snouts. Loth-wolves. They drew silently around the ship, forming a crescent.

“Uh, Rey. They’re huge,” Finn reached for his blaster, taking an involuntary step back.

“No,” she said, raising a hand to stop any further move for a weapon. Stepping forward, she reached out, sensing their serenity, and attempting to project something of the same. They were sentient and bright with the Force. She had heard about Loth-Wolves but had never hoped to see them.

She inclined her head and shoulders to them in a bow. Maybe they would recognize the gesture. 

The largest, standing over two meters at the shoulder, returned the motion, lowering its head and neck. Then, with a tenebrous voice that barely approximated Basic, growled, “follow”.

She grinned back at Finn and Chewie, and the droids watching with seemingly pricked antenna from the loading ramp.

She nodded at the wolves, stepping forward, and they turned and slipped silently back into the grass. A unexpected sprout of warmth and wonder swelled inside her, pressing tight against her ribs.

There was still beauty in the worlds.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References can be found here for:
> 
> [Lothal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lothal)
> 
> [Loth-wolves](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Loth-wolf)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...  
> Here is no water but only rock  
> Rock and no water and the sandy road  
> The road winding above among the mountains  
> Which are mountains of rock without water  
> If there were water we should stop and drink  
> Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think  
> ...
> 
> - _The Waste Land_ by T.S. Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .
> 
> If you're burning for space cake, keep with me. I promise we'll get there. I just need to get Rey on her own.

The wolves led them to an opening in the earth. A hole so small in the side of a dry gulch the wolves had to crawl, scooting nimbly on their bellies. The air underground was cool, but moving. Breathing. As they walked the tunnel branched into a network of capillaries that widened the deeper they traveled. Light from Leia's saber poured over the crystals of gypsum and calcite formations and smoldered in pools covering the floors of open caverns. The wolves moved easily, flowing through the hollows and tunnels while occasionally looking over their shoulders at Rey and the others.

In the largest cavern, a mammoth opening iced with crystalline stalactites and helictite bushes, the wolves stopped and faced them. Panting gently, the leader again lowered its head. 

“Rey,” it said quietly, holding her gaze for a moment. Then all of the wolves peeled away from them into the darkness and it was just her and her friends alone below ground.

“Well,” Finn said, the trance in which they’d been following the wolves clipped away with their departure. “It’s not horrible under here despite everything I’d expect.”

Chewie whined a terse agreement, and Rey smiled at his effort to sound assured. 

But Finn was right. The air was clear and sweet with the smell of clay, and while it was dark, she hadn’t felt claustrophobic. It was familiar. Like the guts of a _Destroyer_ , but so much more alive.

"Have you seen any yet?" Finn asked.

“Yes, but not the right one.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’m supposed to hear it. Like it's singing.”

“Really? Can I hear it?” 

“I think only I can. Unless you hear one for yourself,” she raised an eyebrow at him. But he shook his head, his face a muddle.

“I’m not a Jedi.” 

She still felt a coil stretch in her spine to think that she was. But they had told her so. Those voices. She had heard Luke’s among them, but there had been so many. Whose were they?

And then there was Finn. If he were to stay with her as she continued learning. Learned with her?

She tasted a trace of reticent hope as she said, “You could be.”

He eyed her over his shoulder for a moment, then grinned and chuckled. “Stormtrooper turned Jedi. If you hadn’t taken care of Palpatine for us, that would have. Come on. Let’s find your crystal.”

She nodded, moving forward and down one of the closest openings to a new tunnel. The crystals surrounding them each had their own small voices that whispered quietly, but none with any brilliance. They felt like strangers, and she felt strange here. She had no reason to be here.

They walked for a couple standard hours, the cave system continuing to sprawl, but she never found anything. This wasn't supposed to be such a process. Just a simple outing to satisfy the need of her friends, to prove she was still the person they hoped she was. Generally.

Over time she became so familiar with the vibrations of the crystals, diverse as they were, that eventually she could identify the location of any dozen or so nearby. But if she touched one of small stones it would quiet under her fingers. With the most recent crystal to go mute against her, a grim certainty settled that nothing would come of this.

Weary frustration had been building in Finn and Chewie, and her guilt overwhelmed any determination to have wasted so much of their time. 

Why would none of the crystals work for her? Why would the wolves, who must have understood her motives, brought her here if she was to find nothing?

But there was something else. A sensation that with every tunnel or opening they walked down, she was walking towards a mirror. Through a mirror. 

She’d been ignoring it, assuming it to be some kind of echo in the Force and what she needed was to focus on finding a crystal and getting out. Eventually though, she had to conclude that no Kyber here would call to her, for whatever reason. With her growing resignation, the echo played increasingly in her thoughts until it became all that mattered in the caves. A sense of compounding. Déjà vu frequenting the corners, and a trembling reverberation in the Force with each foot step. Something crescendoing along her spine, increasingly more urgent until it was difficult to focus. 

But the search had gone on long enough for one cycle. Whatever the sensation was needn't worry Finn or Chewie.

“Let’s go back.” 

“No, we've got to be so close!” Finn countered, though obviously relieved. 

None of them had really known what to expect. Beau had told everyone what he knew about Jedi traditions to find kyber, but they was so esoteric that he had only uncovered a few cryptic verses detailing the known history. This was a goose chase in a labyrinth and it was time to stop.

“It’s ok. We've done enough today.”

“Well, should we try somewhere else?” Finn's optimism was charming as ever, but didn't help clarify her resolve.

“Maybe... There’s something else about this place--but I’m not sure. Let’s just go back to the ship, and I can figure out what to do next.”

Chewie rumbled solemnly and rested his paw on her shoulder as she walked past him, retracing her steps. She smiled and nodded but kept moving. 

They didn't see the wolves again as they wound their way back out of the cave system. Once outside the light had faded to dusk. The _Falcon_ glowed with the last of the twilight, resting low in the grass half a kilometer away. 

Nearly back to the _Falcon_ , a WTK-65B interstellar transport descended from the dim sky, intercepting their path. Tension radiated from it in short staccato waves, and Rey stopped with the others to watch it land.

“Know them?” Finn asked. 

“No.”

The ship landed like a crouching predatory cat, its ion engines spitting and hissing through their articulated thrust exhausts. Chewie unslung his bowcaster.

The entry ramp lowered and perhaps two dozen masked and hooded people filed down, each holding a red-painted melee weapon and equipped with percussive blasters. All of their masks were a simple black cloth covering their face, except for one individual who stepped forward in the center of the group of shadows.

This person wore a mask made of a smooth, burnished meteoritic metal. It was peppered with tiny hammered divots and featured eyes of black glass, but no mouth or nose—where the mouth should have been was a line of black rivets. There was something about the mask, a dark presence that wasn’t reflected in the person wearing it. But then, the wearer pulled out a lightsaber and ignited its red beam.

“What?!” Finn seethed behind her.

“It’s fine,” she told him. There was much fear among these people to be a real threat. And no presence of the Force. They felt small and feeble and mostly irritating for blocking her path. “Who are you?” she directed at the group.

“We are the Acolytes of the Beyond. I am Kiza,” the leader replied. Her voice grating but withered.

“Why are you carrying a lightsaber? The Sith are gone,” Rey responded, just annoyed at the red blaze of the plasma. It was not a weapon she'd ever wanted to see again. And certainly not in the hands of someone like this simple, indoctrinated stranger.

“The Sith are never gone. Their legacy will never die, and there will always be more of us to herald their return. The Jedi, now. You will be gone, tonight.”

Rey sighed in rough exasperation, considering the group in front of her. She would have preferred to have been able to stay in Lothal for a while to consider why none of the crystals had called to her and to explore that sensation in the caves. These parasites didn't need to be hurt, but they needed to leave her alone.

Reaching out with the Force, she pulled the lightsaber from the masked woman’s hand, disassembling it mid-air and using her own blade to melt the stable components into slag. The crystal she sent flying away into the grass.

“Let’s get back to the _Falcon_. Chewie, get ready to take off,” she quipped as the saber’s owner raged and the others reacted. She reached out and held the masked group immobile, paralyzed in stasis. A memory of a moment in Takodana's forests threatened to resurface, but she snarled at it and pushed back.

Chewie bayed in irritation not to be fighting but moved towards the Corellian freighter with Finn. Rey followed, stepping backwards to watch the attackers as she held them in place, feeling their fury seethe at her in prickly beats. Once she felt Chewie initiate the repulsorlift drive, she turned and moved to boarded the _Falcon_ , only releasing her hold once the loading ramp had closed behind her. Reaching the cockpit, she slung herself into the co-pilot’s chair and started prepping the navicomputer for hyperspace.

Once at light speed, Finn broke the silence from his passenger chair. “Those really weren’t Sith?” His voice prickly with tension.

“No, I don’t know who they were,” Rey answered. There was nothing about those masked people that even begun to approximate the abyssal darkness she had felt in Palpatine. Or the mercurial agony and undulating storm of power that had resonated in Ben, when he was Kylo Ren. The acolytes were just hateful and desperate. “But they were not Sith,” she finished.

Finn nodded. “I’d hoped we’d be done with that sort of thing for a while,” he said to her. “After everything.”

She held back a scoff, as well as a twist of gloom in her gut. Then wondered at her reaction. She had always known cynicism, and had always managed to suppress it into a tightly closed box. She still could. “There will always be darkness in the galaxy, Leia. We just needed to give everyone an equal playing field to fight it. With what's happened, hopefully things have been balanced. For a while.”

“Yeah, but I say it’s time we’ve deserved a rest.”

Rey swallowed, willed a smile, and nodded at him again.

“Where are we going, by the way?” he asked, trusting as ever. She wondered again, this time if she deserved that trust.

She thought back to the sensation in Lothal’s caves. Of the echos implying there was another _place_ there, parallel to their own. She wanted to go back to that, see if she could find a way to access it. Perhaps that’s why the wolves had greeted and shown them to the caves—not to find a crystal but to find a place. She had hoped they could stay in the grasslands for the night, and she'd go back to the caves alone the next cycle. But after the Acolytes showed up they needed to put time and space between them and Lothal. And there was still so much to be seen.

“Chewie, I hope you don’t mind, but we’re relatively close so I put us on course for Kashyyyk. I thought we could visit Rwookrrorro. I’ve always wanted to meet Malla and Lumpawaroo, if you wanted to see them.”

Chewie glanced at her in surprise but hummed and nodded agreement.

.

They spent the last hours of the cycle on Kashyyyk in the house of Chewie’s wife, Mallatobuck. Their son, Lumpawaroo visited to hear Chewie describe the battle at Exegol while Malla groomed Rey’s hair, combing and resetting the knots with strong, agile hands. Rey blushed deeply when Chewie told her it was one of the highest honors she could receive among Wookies, but was gratified to hear the esteem was in part based on her relationships to the people that had meant so much to them. Solos and Skywalkers.

After Chewie invited Finn to join them the next cycle to hunt a rogue Terentatek that had been decimating the nearby Arrawtha-dyr populations, Rey decided that she would go back to Lothal alone with the promise that she would stay as safe as possible. She really didn’t anticipate a return of the Acolytes after their resounding display of ineptitude against her and the others, and she was relieved Chewie and Finn wouldn’t have to risk getting caught in crossfire again.

Excusing herself for bed, and accepting a soft, magenta bonshyyyr fruit from Lumpawaroo, Rey carried a cloak to the balcony where she had requested to sleep. BB-8 hummed at her side and D-O nestled under her arm as she settled on the smooth, wind-swept floor of the ledge. It was a wide branch of the wroshyr tree which Malla’s neighborhood had been built into. Malla lived on a high outskirt of the city, appropriate for her standing in the community as Chewbacca’s wife. Outside was a broad view of the lights and the forests below. The air was think and humid, which was simultaneously delightful and asphyxiating, but the breeze carried through the wroshyr’s branches helped her breathe.

The fruit was the softest, sweetest thing she had ever eaten, and she was still sucking its juice off a finger as she curled down beside the droids and lay her head back to observe the stars among the overhead branches. They shone dim but undefeated through the velvet humidity of the atmosphere. The milky streak of the core grounding her with its bloom of familiar light. She shivered despite the heat.

A breeze spilled over her, grazing the moisture on her lips from where she had licked the fruit’s juice clean. She pressed a finger to her mouth, and waited for sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:  
>    
> [the Acolytes of the Beyond](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Acolytes_of_the_Beyond)  
>    
> [Kashyyyk's flora and fauna](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kashyyyk)
> 
> I know the Reylo has been mild-to-non-existent so far, but bear with me. Slow burn tag added.  
> Also, this is definitely not a Finnrey fic. I'm operating with the determination Finn is willing to take one for the team and graciously accept permanent friend-zoning (despite anything JB tweets). Plus, I really like Jannah, even though I have no plans to incorporate her. But I'm definitely ready to board that ship, whatever it's called.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...  
> In this decayed hole among the mountains  
> In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing  
> Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel  
> There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home  
> It has no windows, and the door swings,  
> Dry bones can harm no one.  
> Only a cock stood on the rooftree  
> Co co rico co co rico  
> In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust  
> Bringing rain  
> ...
> 
> - _The Waste Land_ by T.S. Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might say things are getting pretty serious in this chapter.
> 
> But I'm just getting warmed up.
> 
> If you know what I mean.

Rey rotated the grips of the control yoke outward, pulling back on the throttle and engaging the alluvial dampers as she swung the Falcon into a tidy landing pirouette. An elegant ocean creature dancing beneath her hands. Lothal was quiet and peaceful, its auburn grasses gleaming under the placid morning sky. Stratus streamed in rivers across the atmosphere.

She had reentered the atmosphere from the far north, submitting Poe's underworld-approved clearance codes to the local customs channel. An automated reply green-lighted her, and with it a reassuring sense of anonymity.

She'd meditated most of the time in hyperspace returning to Lothal after a scouring of the Aionomica did nothing to explain the sensation in the caves. Defensively, she had cast a cautious net to the future for the presence of more strangers but felt nothing lurking, waiting for her return to the grasslands. Regardless, she still would have to be more careful. The Acolytes should not have been such a surprise the last time; she had let herself get too distracted in the caves. And by the peculiar patterns of presence she had felt in the Force there.

Something she needed.

Still, she had decided that there must had been a vergence on Lothal, which the Force roiled and emanated from like ocean waves. If she went to it, she knew that she would find something there.

When she'd noticed the vergence the first time they had come she had thought it was in the caves. But as she had meditated, focusing on its pull, she realized the epicenter of the prickling sensation was above the caves. Echoing into them. Among the chatter of the crystals, like birds in a forest, she hadn't been able to step beyond the sense of another place, or of dimension that followed her, skimming her mind. After reflecting, it was clear that that those two sensations had been intertwined.

Disembarking the Falcon, Leia's lightsaber on her hip, and Luke's tucked under her bunk, she walked in line with the draw of the vergence. Aligning to it was effortless and automatic, she just had to go to it, pointed like a compass needle.

The vergence was centered on a nondescript stretch of prairie not far from the opening to the caves. There was nothing to indicate it was there besides the Force, spiraling in slow, heavy currents around a vertex. She circled the flat, plain patch of ground, trying to isolate the center point.

She had no idea what she would find, but _something_ reassured her that if she took her time, and trusted, she'd know what to do. 

Lowering to the ground and crossing her legs she closed her eyes to sink back into meditation. The wind was calm but warm with the climbing sun. She let herself focus on that, soaking in by the heat and the sound of swaying grass.

And then it was gone.

Opening her eyes, it appeared to have suddenly become night. The stars stretched in every direction. Apart from them she sat in an abyss of infinitely vast empty space. But it wasn't a vacuum. The Force still surrounded and permeated her, present and reassuring as the sunlight had been yet the most serene she had ever experienced, still as water settled in a glass.

She sat on some sort of track or pathway, invisible but solid, and framed by opaque lines of white light. They stretched forward into a matrix of other pathways; some ending in circles of light, others curving endlessly into the darkness.

And voices. Disembodied words carried to her through the nothingness. Luke's question on Ahch-To, "Who are you?" The resonating timbre of another man's she couldn't place, "Train him." A woman's, clear and astringent, "So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause," and then, somehow, Jannah's, "We laid our weapons down." The words continued, some familiar and others completely foreign, statements overlapping each other until they became as present but inconspicuous as the stars.

Rey stood and turned. Behind her was a doorway, framed in white lines, to the plains of Lothal. The grasses of the prairie cut abruptly to nothingness at her feet. She reached forward and her fingers felt the warm breeze that she had left behind.

Turning away, back to the darkness, she stepped further into it. The pathway she walked along quickly branched and she took the left fork, approaching a nearby circle. The lines that formed the circle stood upright beside the path, framing nothing. Just the stars and an infinite blackness. She stopped to consider it, reaching her hand toward into the empty space the lines surrounded.

An image faded into existence. A scene from the Resistance cave on Ajan Kloss; Rose standing next to the ramp of a CEC-YT 1760 light transport pod, which she had taken to Hays Minor. Rey had watched her depart days before. Finn stepped forward and swung Rose into a hug, and Rey realized she was watching a memory. The scene continued to unfold, in which Rose and Poe began a conversation about the lingering trace of First Order occupation in the Otomok system. Rey remembered every word before it was spoken.

She moved on and in the next circle she approached there appeared a scene of Han and Chewie, firing at stormtroopers in the chaos of a battle. She recognized the crumbled remains of Maz's castle on Takodana, currently being assaulted by heavy explosives dropped from the air. The fighters slashing above were Resistance X-Wings and First Order Siener TIEs. And there, near the forest, a black predator, was the Upsilon-class command shuttle Ben had traveled in. When Ben was Kylo.

Something unannounced changed in the focus of the battle and the TIEs, with a hive-collective consciousness, suddenly disengaged the fire fight. Grouping together in evasive formation, they prepared to pull-out.

"REYYY!" She heard Finn's rough, frantic scream. Finding him, she watched him run, hurdling over the rubble, chasing something. Chasing her.

Kylo was carrying her. A pale slip of pendulous sinew in his arms. He had just taken her from the forest. Where she had first met him. She continued to watch as he entered the maw of the shuttle with her, obliviously far out of reach of Finn, and the dark ship ascended into the sky with the rest of the fleet.

She could see the past. Could she control it? Choose was she would see? Interact with it? Could she find someone? 

_Ben._

She started down the pathway to the next circle, the questions coursing in shuddering heaves through her. Her lungs and heart pressed hard by the heavy memory of desolation. Each step as certain as falling rain. She needed to see him. One more time. A million more times.

The doorway she was approaching was dark, like all the others. Empty. How would she make this work? How would she find him?

As if in answer, light materialized in the doorway, spreading within the circle like a breath on glass. An azureous sky, thick with the memory of a storm.

He was there. 

Standing above a calm sea in the wreckage of a colossal architectural body. Pulling his heavy, dark tunic off of his shoulders, revealing a simple woven knit beneath.

"Ben," she breathed to him, her voice breaking with the weight of her hope, and he turned. There was the ghost of a shadow that hung from him, but his eyes brimmed with something fragile and bright, cresting through the penumbra that bound them.

She stepped through the portal onto the metal of the Death Star's wreckage. The air enveloping her, reminiscent of rain, heavy and exhausted from the fury of the tempest before.

"You came back," he murmured. His face a pale mask. So still. Why? What if he wasn’t real? He had to be.

Wordlessly, she strode forward to the precipice he stood on, where she had abandoned him after taking his ship. Still, he was there.

The last step she took to him flowed into her body melding against his. Lungs filling with the taste of earth and ozone. One arm reaching up the plane of his back and alighting upon his shoulders, her other hand finding purchase woven into his damp hair. 

His shock tightened in his muscles at first, his entire body momentarily rigid and bond rippling in quick, staccato beats. Then he melted, leaning into her, the motion vivid and urgent. And real. So real. She could feel him.

His own hands reached for her, one moving to cradle her jaw gently as a moth wing, the other curling around her ribs, pulling in, closing any space between them.

Nothing mattered beyond him. His presence, physical, solid, filled her with the weight of the ocean. Him. _Ben._ His torso expanded against hers with each inhalation, and she pressed back, arching her lumbar vertebrae to close tighter against him. Needing to fill every hollow. She tilted her brow into the curve of his neck, feeling the sear of his skin, polished ore warmed under the sun. Under her fingers his hair was sleek and alive, gossamer silk. His pulse echoing inside her own veins, thrumming with heat and life.

"I'm here," she whispered against the curve where his clavicles met, pivoting her pelvis to fuse against his. The warmth from his body soaked into her, blooming across her skin and saturating her bones. Sweeping her hand up, she wrapped it tightly against the base of his skull, to steady herself to look back into his eyes again.

His eyes had haunted her after Exegol. She saw the ghost of them every night, every moment in which she had stopped in dread to examine a bead of happiness that formed in her life after his death. The way his eyes had searched in those last moments, before she had lost him, left her feeling crippled by selfishness and foolishness. He had given her his life, and she had basked in presumption and conceit. She hadn't paused to feel how fragile he was in her hands. Held by a thread that was disintegrating more each moment. His eyes had searched for the confidence that she would survive. That she would live to know love. That she might love him back. And in her ridiculous ignorance, all she had done was answer him with a kiss. She had lost herself fully in that kiss, sinking entirely into her gratitude and adoration. He was hers. She had drowned herself in idiotic, impudent assurance that he was hers, and she lost him for it.

She had let him lose everything.

She should have known what he had done, with that heat from his hand on her hip. She should have done something to stop it. To negate it. Prevent the repercussions. They should have had a life together. And after he had gone, she knew that it was her fault.

His eyes should have judged her. Stripped her bare to the brittle shell. And the grateful, reverent hope that filled it.

But all she saw now was a reflection. Gentle and understanding.

Here, on Kef Bir, the moon where she had slid a lightsaber through his chest, she saw in his eyes only what she felt in herself. Love and hope rooted in a void of loneliness and fear. The blood that passed through the chambers of their hearts no longer needed to pulse with the uncertainty of whether she and he would ever belong to anyone. They did.

She reached up and kissed him. Pouring herself into him through the bridge of their mouths and the Force that surrounded them. She submerged herself entirely, gratitude and marvel filling the only spaces the existed between them. He kissed her back like he was trying to taste her soul, to breathe life into a fire. Her belly filled with flame, and she pressed the heat back unto him, concentrating entirely in the steady presence of his mouth against hers. Their bodies blended together into a whole. Complete.

Eventually, she needed to breathe and gasped against the pulse in his throat, burying her head into his collar. While she panted, he tightened his hold and the compression bloomed into a balmy pain. She savored it. But it wasn't enough.

She pressed her mouth back to his, inhaling him. Learning to breathe through him. Every breath crushing and releasing her diaphragm to shivers of bliss that flared down her spine. The lithe power of his body hummed against her, soldered to her. She slid one of her hands from his shoulder, down along the curve of his ribs to splay along the small of his back, then tighten around the edge of his waist. Then to the place she had stabbed him. Healed him. She queried gently at the taut strength of his muscle, satisfied, then reached up, wandering the stretch of his sternum to feel the weight of the pressure between their fused chests.

He let her explore without interruption, keeping his hands near her hair, neck, and face as if her mind resting underneath was the only thing that he cared about. And she could feel him, his mind brushing against hers, the edges tangling so she couldn't tell the difference between them.

After her hands completed a circle of him, trying to know him entirely, she leaned back to see his face. She needed to see him, to name the emotion she felt in his body, shuddering and purling in waves of light.

He looked back at her, eyes clearer than she had ever seen. Patient.

Waiting for her.

And now that she had him, what? Could she stay? Dissuade him from going to Exegol? Prevent his death?

Then what? Palpatine would live. The Resistance would be left waiting in a cave, unconscious to the future that would progress and bind them in their ignorance. They would not prevent Palpatine from launching his fleet. And once Palpatine knew she and Ben were together he would disperse that fleet and they wouldn't be able to stop it, spreading like a virus to one system after another.

But Ben. _Ben_. She had to save him. She owed him that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:
> 
> [The World Between Worlds](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/World_between_worlds)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—  
> Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night  
> And watching, with eternal lids apart,  
> Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,  
> The moving waters at their priestlike task  
> Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,  
> Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask  
> Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—  
> No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,  
> Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,  
> To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,  
> Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,  
> Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,  
> And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
> 
> \- _Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art_ by John Keats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay with this chapter. I decided to take a step back and analyze my priorities, which resulted in some new intentions for this arc. So, the story is going to take a slightly different tone and path moving forward. I don't expect anyone to object if you're still looking for a fix-it(!). I have edited the tags, and made some small description-oriented changes to previous chapters, but the established plot overall hasn't been affected and there shouldn't be any reason to backtrack.
> 
> The virgins lose their cards today. The explicit rating has arrived.

Rey had always been nobody. Then she met Ben, and through him learned to feel things that could not grow in the desert. She already knew fear well, and how to suppress hope. But he offered her an ocean of fresh water to slake a lifetime without rain. She had been the first to reach her hand out to him, offering her hand on that ocean planet where she had come to accept how truly alone she had always been. Something he understood, because he had been alone too. And he had reached back. 

But when he had offered her a home, in a throne room set in cold dark stretches of space, she couldn’t accept. She needed life and he was searching for release in the opposite. She knew what his life had done to him—how it had torn his soul from his body. But she also knew the buried beauty of that soul and believed that it could be returned. That was his choice to make. But she could only have him whole in order to be whole herself.

Loved.

So, she hid herself from him in the verdant jungle behind an encampment of soldiers. Built layers upon layers of shields to keep him from finding her, and under those layers she pushed herself to grow as strong as she possibly could. Because if she didn’t, she’d succumb. He was part of her, and eventually, whatever the cost, she feared she would let go of the tension separating them and take his hand. 

But now they are whole.

She can love him back.

Rey pulls back barely enough to see his eyes, which are sweeping over her face, unable to settle. Around them the Force is pendulous. Serene. As if pleased with what they’re doing. Within it she can still feel the resting potential of the storm they had fought in, now calmed into this pensive balance of air and water. It feels so at odds that they’re here, standing on the wrecked body of a behemoth that had done terrible things. But the Death Star’s husk only feels restful, released from its past and its possessors to dissolve back into the water and earth. She sees this in Ben, too.

And for the first time, she sees peace in him. It almost looks awkward, like it doesn’t fit him. His body has been shaped for war. But his eyes are finally fluid, free. He looks at her as if he had just been born. 

When she had kissed him on the demolished throne of the Sith, she had tasted his grief. She had thought it was for the life he had already lost, not realizing it was for what he would lose. Everything. 

Now he tastes densely of hope.

Finally, as his breathing normalizes, his eyes settle on hers, hands stroking along her spine and the base of her skull. He swallows, and she feels him brace.

“Why did you come back?” His voice is hoarse, half drowned in the tide of emotion she feels lapping at her through the bond.

“I felt you change.” It’s an honest answer. And she has no idea how much more to tell him. 

She’s here, in a time that’s over a standard month passed, and she had no idea what the repercussions will be. A slice of fear slides through her, and he tightens his grip in reaction. A mix of emotion fights for dominance on the window that is his face while they both tense, waiting for words. There had been no time to think this through.

“Ben, you have to believe me. I don’t know how much I can tell you, but I’m with you now. We’ll fight Palpatine, together, and he’ll die—but so will you.”

“You’ll live?” he breathes, the roil of reaction in him as she talks stops and he is rigid as he asks his question.

Yes. She lives. But it can’t be enough.

“I do,” she says haltingly, “But I need you to live, too. There must be some way.”

His gaze retracts while he considers this, pupils constricted and jaw set. “How do you know this happens?”

Rey stiffens, searching for something she can explain. The Jedi texts from Ahch-To had given her words for metaphysical things, the Netherworld of Unbeing, vergence scatters, a Chain World Theorem or World Between Worlds, but every description or visualization was vague and inadequate. She believed the portals that she had passed through to here was connected to the things she had seen in the codices, but she had no idea what implications would come from her movement through space and time. 

She has to be safe, changing things as little as possible. There could, _should,_ be another version of her now, flying to Ahch-To in Ben’s _TIE Whisper_. And _he_ must still go to Exegol, to her. To help her kill Palpatine in the same sequence of events that had already happened. She just can’t let things end the way they did.

She can’t tell him anything to change his course of action leading to that point. It can’t be risked. But she knows what she needs to do.

She needs to die so Ben can live.

And they can’t waste any more time in this world while she finds a way to make that happen.

“Come with me,” she says, pulling at his hand. He follows, and she steps back. “Close your eyes,” he complies and she does the same, continuing to retrace her steps to the doorway that brought her here, trusting her feelings.

And then the sound of the waves is replaced by voices, soft and ambiguous as wind.

Ben’s hand is still in hers.

She opens her eyes to see him, and inexplicably feels reassured; time doesn’t matter here in this void of stars and pathways. The portal is dark and closed behind them. They can’t stay forever, not in this empty place, but they can take the time they need.

“Do you know where we are?” she asks. She feels no anticipation, but he knows so much. A life-long scholar searching for answers. He might have insight.

“There are records, theories from the Sith. A place that connects worlds, outside of time. I don’t know anything conclusive.” He pivots, taking in the lines of light among the stars and blackness. “How did you find it?”

“I can’t explain it. Not now. Please, trust me.”

He looks back at her, mouth parted and eyes wide, searching. But he nods, jaw closing in gentle compliance.

And she’s suddenly struck by the marvel of his presence, given a moment to fully absorb the fact that he’s standing in front of her in this incomprehensible world. He is tall and powerful and _incredibly male_.

Hesitating for the first time, she steps toward him, needing him despite the precarious fragility of the situation. Despite the bridge of their minds, there’s something missing between them. The most basic connection. A primal need. She offers this to him through the bond and he responds by closing the remaining space between them. One broad hand rises, cupping her face, and the other draws her flush to him in a solid motion. 

She feels moored. An unfamiliar, startling feeling. The disorder of things muting as she presses back with her body.

As sated as it feels to have him against her, her mind recognizes an ache budding inside her that hands can’t reach. She had stopped herself from acknowledging this for so long. She doesn’t need to anymore. They have some time, and they might never again.

Rey slides one of her hands down along his sternum. He inhales deeply, chest rising, as her fingers pass his waist. When his eyelids flutter as she finds him, she feels that flutter in her own stomach. Reaching up, she puts her mouth on his again, breathing in pace with him and feeling his pulse against her lips. 

With her other hand she pulls against the crest of his neck, sinking to her knees onto the solid, invisible plane beneath her. He follows with sinuous grace that contradicts his size. Once close enough to the ground she moves to straddle him, pressing her arms upon his shoulders as he reclines on his haunches to give her full purchase.  
Electric heat and tension lick elastic strokes up through her center, and she can feel the sensation resonating inside him. The layers of fabric between them don’t conceal anything, and despite her inexperience, her body moves against his with a satisfying intuition. 

Rey reaches for the hem of his shirt, urgently wanting to see the fair skin and muscle underneath. It’s an image she has tried to suppress too many times in the last year. The freedom to touch him now churns something bright and delicious in her belly. His smile, reflecting her own, are paired with his own movement to undo her belt. She pulls off his sweater first and is able to briefly trace her fingers across his chest, but the constellation of scars, scars she had given him, were gone. Like the scar on his face, which he had enigmatically kept despite an array of cosmetic medical options. Until she had healed the saber wound she had given him Kef Bir.

Then her belt peels away and he holds the fabric of her tunic slightly aloft, waiting. She looks back at his face, trying to project her regret for the last year through the bond. His mouth breaks into a soft smile, the Force clenching between them, and he kisses her again, firmly. Gasping from the pleasure of his tongue finding hers, she raises her arms and lets him remove the linen still between them.

Once the garments were removed, the burn of his skin against her breasts and inflamed nipples soak through to her shoulder blades, despite the hollow chill of the space they’re in. She wraps both arms around his neck and closes her mouth on the skin below the point of his jaw, shivering at the taste of salt and wood smoke. He smells like the air after rain has doused a fire.

As Ben bends his neck to brush his mouth along the line of her shoulder, the pressure of him between her legs shifts and she reaches with her hips to find it again. A smooth, urgent noise passes through her trachea and he leans back to consider her, pupils flared and vividly inquisitively. She passes a hand down his side to the small of his back and pulls against him with spread fingers as she presses her pelvis tighter to his, reaching again for his mouth. He kisses her back raptly but doesn’t make any further movement. She’s sopping. And it’s been building to this for a year.

Sighing she leans back to the ground, pulling him with her. Before he could fully follow, she weaves her fingers under the layer of material circling his waist and began to push down. His breath hitches against her clavicle as she slips a foot out of its boot to jostle the rest of the fabric past his thighs with her toes. He manages to shuck his own boots off, and she shunts the wadded piece of clothing past his feet with a triumphant ‘ha’ after stretching the full length her toes will extend. He’s so long. Now that he’s bare, she exhales with satisfaction as he finally moves to help her remove her last article of clothing from her own legs.

As he kneels to remove her other boot his eyes catch hers and abruptly he pauses, considering her. She feels the strain and uncertainty in his hesitation, the Force closing and bunching around him as he holds back.

“You’re certain—you want this?” His voice is rough, balancing need, fear, and restraint.

She stretches up, propping her weight on an elbow to stare fixedly at him. She tries to summon a well of conviction and channel it to him though the bond. The density of her trust and need. The fear of losing him again, bubbling through her a icy underground spring. Her certainty. “Ben. Yes.” 

He considers her for a moment, eyes narrowed and shoulders curled in tension. He’s not the mercurial mound of embers she knew before. He’s like wine, halting and flowing in a tumble of impulse and inhibition. Then nods, barely, He reaches down to kiss her again, drinking her in while one trembling hand trails her jaw line. Then he moves in a lithe stroke to pull her pants down over her ankles. 

For the first time, she sweeps her eyes over the length of him. He is so solid, and beautiful, and huge. Her throat fills and she grasps for him.  
Pulling him back on to solid nothingness beneath them, she wraps a knee over his waist. His erection is suspended between them, and she stretches a hand down to feel him, her palm steadying once it finds him to glide over him. She bites back hard against intimidation.

Ben shudders under her fingers as they move along him, and she breathes deeply in fascination at the movement of the Force around them. It surges and heaves. 

Rey pivots, shifting to sit astride him again. He breathes loud and hot against her chest, the humid warmth rolling over her beaded nipple which he reaches to skim with a calloused thumb. The feel of him under her slick nerves coils exquisitely through her. There’s a pearl at the tip of him, barely visible in the radiant light. She lifts it with a finger to her mouth, needing to know how he tastes. Incredible. Mouth open, he watches, so she stretches down to close it with her own. He rises to meet her, threading his arms under her elbows to hold the base of her neck. His hands are so big, overlapping to fit the curve. She slides her hips forward, the sweep of her against him sending pulses of electricity ricocheting around her ribcage. He responds in a compressed tremble, and she feels the urgency of his restraint grazing against her mind. It’s in her, too.

She pulls back, looking for his eyes. They’re wide and focused, waiting for her to lead; his mouth closed in a precise line, tempered. She puts her mouth to his again, inhaling deep, jagged breaths while she reaches for him.

She hadn’t really known what to expect. It is so much more than she anticipated. The connection of the bond resonates in every cell and centimeter of her mind, filling her with _Ben_. 

The slow slide down him nearly buckles her spine. She has to pause at the bottom, adapting with him until the tremor of their racing pulses stills enough to move again. Grinning at the sound quaking in his chest, she leans forward to place her teeth on the ridge of his shoulder, biting down against the inadequately descriptive obscenities thick in her own throat. 

Covering the plane from her hips to the base of her spine in his hands, he pulls her deeper. She hinges and tilts her vertebral column, seeking. Finally ending at the limit their bodies allow.

She feels so incredibly whole with him

Every luscious movement after pushes her thrumming ache closer to a tiny point of light buried inside her. She hunts the point with him, the bones of his hip rising to apprehend her beneath the humming strain of her quads. His hands, wrapped around her waist, both guide and shadow her movement, gliding with her over the taut muscles of his lap.

A release begins to stretch up her spine, stroking each vertebra. She clenches his hair between her fingers, panting against him. At the top, the tension ruptures and surges, lurching down her limbs to hesitate and quiver before finally overflowing through the tips of her body.

“Rey,” her name slips between his teeth and she catches the words with her mouth, tasting like rain and iron on her tongue. Still inside her, registering as a deep, gripping throb, he waits until the spasms pass.

The bright light that she’d been chasing has completely saturated her, gleaming under her skin. And she can feel it passing into him through their bond, flowing like pouring water. She looks down to where they’re connected, where heat and bliss roll away from the center point in thick, succulent waves. The Force holds tight and reassuring around them, almost in approval. 

This is all so right.

She leans forward, delighting in the blazing flare in his dark eyes and whispers against his throat, “keep going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to worry. Other than jumping a ghost's bones in a Netherworld, Rey has a plan. And it’s not entirely self-sacrifice.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,  
> Enwrought with golden and silver light,  
> The blue and the dim and the dark cloths  
> Of night and light and the half-light,  
> I would spread the cloths under your feet:  
> But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
> I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
> Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
> 
>  _He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven_ by W. B. Yeats

They are fitted together, bare skin melded as they lie suspended in this place where worlds are chained together. Ben’s body is dimly lit by the ambient light of stars and inexplicable physical lines bordering the solid pathway they’re lying on, and her hands draw lines over it as if attempting to record the frame to understand the mystery.

But he’s not really a mystery, as much as she had tried to convince herself he was over the past year. She knows him. He is part of her.

“How long can we stay here?” he asks, his voice low and quiet in her ear as he strokes a stray lock behind it. Rey has worn her hair down ever since Exegol. If tied back, only enough to keep from her eyes. Through the bond she can feel his approval, a small piece of emotion in the swarming mix battling for control inside of him.

“I don’t know. But the doorways I’ve seen appear to enter to any time. When I asked, one opened to you.” To the moment she wanted most. To his turn.

Her stomach twists to consider the risk she’s taken since. Bringing him here. She bites down the words that describe her hope that she can return Ben to the time she had taken him from. She had been too impulsive—should have stopped to consider the outcomes and at least calculate possibilities. Instead she had acted completely on instinct, letting her unimpeded momentum reassure her as an indication from the Force that everything would work out. But she’s no master in understanding how these things work. No one is, now. 

Rey presses tighter against him, lining her pelvis against his and tilting her forehead into the hollow of his neck. She’s wanted this for so long. To feel someone against her, to love someone. And she feels, wholly, his reciprocity. 

It’s almost incomprehensible. She had barely spoken to him on Kef Bir, in his time, to give any sort of explanation for her return. In his perspective, she had recently buried her saber into his chest, abandoned him on wreckage marooned at sea, and before that done everything she possibly could to hide from and deflect his attempts to reach her for a year. But, unquestioningly, he came here with her. 

They are bonded, and the truth of this is something she understands innately, if something she can’t explain. Ben had called it a dyad. In time, she’ll have him explain it to her. With time, she will know him as deeply as she knows herself. In many ways, she already does. She shares so much with him. Finally, they can share trust.

Ben had trusted her without question when she had pulled him into this place. Trusted her to touch him, to—touch him in those ways. She feels a blush rise, blood pooling in hot blotches across her chest and face, to reflect on how hasty she had been with her need. And how he had shared that need. They had barely spoken to each other compared to most people, had spent more time with lightsabers in their hands than not, and still he let her pull him to the ground and pull his clothes off without the most basic objection. 

But it had felt right. All of it. Nothing about them was expected, simple, or even rational. It just was and it is right. 

Ben had hidden himself in a dark forest for so long, but once she stood at the edge and offered her own hand, he came to take it.

As if Ben is reading the flow of thought and emotion passing through her, his aura through the bond begins to change—darken. As if he is taking a step back into the tree line. Rey tenses, and her fingers tighten in the curve of his hip where they’ve finally stopped to rest.

“Rey, what are you doing?” His voice is reserved, pale. She feels him tighten against her as he says it, bracing.

The question rattles in her ribcage. How can it not be obvious? They’ve barely spoken, but she’s explained enough. That he’ll die and that she’s going to try to save him. 

She says the most direct thing she can, “I’m finding a way to be with you.”

He inhales and she can feel his chest shudder against her as the swell of peace and hope that had earlier filled him caves, crumbling to something broken. But when he finally speaks his voice is low and controlled, “Rey, no.”

Rey starts to answer, indignation burning in her throat, but her intention is cut as he continues.

“The things I have done cannot be excused. And if I save your life, then that will be the thing I’ve most deserved to live for. Anything else—I wouldn’t deserve.”

“Ben, this is not about what is deserved. This is about what is right. Finally making things right,” Rey chokes on the last words, and hates the way her voice splinters as she says them. She can feel Ben breathing deeply against her, straining to suppress an eruption of emotion. 

“I need you,” she breathes through clenched teeth, tightening her grip on him. “You’ve said it yourself—two that are one.”

“Rey, what matters is that you live.”

“And that _you_ live. You would give me the life I want. Where I belong.” 

“And me? Where would I belong?”

“With me.”

He’s mute, muscles strained and rigid against hers. 

“Ben, you never wanted what happened to you—your choices. But you survived. We both did.” She pauses, inhaling and trying to breathe her hope back into him. “And now we can live. But I need you to do it with me.”

His body softens, like the sea on the other side of the doorway they had come through. His hand, woven into her hair, moves to cradle her cervical vertebrae. He kisses her eyelids, one after the other. His lips cool and soft as petals from nightblossoms.

“The only way I could ever see to move forward was to recognize what I had done and live with it.”

“Live with me,” she whispers against his skin. “Do things differently, but with me. It will be alright.”

The weight of his fear, buried far into the bond but as massive and enduring as a glacier, begins to melt. A river flows from it, hot and hopeful and wanting.

She reaches for his mouth with her own and drinks.

The world is still and quiet around them, a vast open expanse of potential.

“Tell me what I need to do.”

Rey concentrates, trying to arrange the order of things in the most precise way possible. There was only one sequence that she can see. Ben must to Exegol, just as he had gone before. He will find her there, the other her. She had felt herself, a spark of light coursing through the blackness of space towards Ahch-To, while she simultaneously stood and held Ben on Endor’s moon. Ben will find the other her on Exegol, she’s certain, but she can’t interfere in case she changes the outcome of events. She’ll have to stay behind and return to Lothal the way she had come.

Rey inhales, steadying herself, “help me kill _him_.” Another inhalation, “I don’t know the implications of how things might change if I tell you anything else, so I can’t say anything but this. We have to go back, and you’ll have to leave me on Kef Bir to find me again on Exegol.” Rey inhales deeply, her lungs feeling like taught sheets of wet paper, threatening to tear and collapse. 

Ben sweeps a hand down her arm, then intertwines his fingers with hers.

“Then, when I die on Exegol, you’ll have to let me.” She stops. Holding his gaze in the dusk as securely as she can, she forces her breaths to come and go evenly. He has to believe her. After several moments of severe silence, he tips his head forward, encouraging her to continue.

“I’ll still be _here_. I believe that, and I’ll find you in thirty-six days when I return from here.”

Ben pulls back to see her face and cups her jaw with his hand. He continues to be silent for a long time, watching her with searching eyes that trace every line of her face. 

“Thirty-six days?” he finally says with a trembling inhalation, a trace of anger reverberating in his voice. “I’ll have to wait for thirty-six days to know whether you’ve lived? After I’ve let you die?”

“I did for you,” The words rise from her throat like stones. A lifetime of waiting, one they both understand, condenses to push the words through. Ben is silent and the bond between them knots itself as she continues to speak. “But everything will be alright.” She pauses, searching for some truth to give him. She remembers her father’s statement, which she carried in a forbidden place since she was five years old. “I’ll be safe here. I promise.”

Ben’s chin trembles. But he inhales deeply, bracing with resolve, “Where will I find you? When you come back?”

“Lothal,” she says softly, smiling at the thought of the plains of grass. Rich auburn colors and sprawling skies so familiar to home, Jakku, but filled with so much more life. “There was a Jedi temple there. In the northwestern hemisphere. I’ll be there.” She sends him a mental image through the bond, and he closes his eyes, nodding in acknowledgement.

.

They lie there together for a while after, and she tries to remember the smell and shape of him the way she’s tried to remember the color green and the sound of his voice. His smell is green. Rain and pine. When they eventually stand, dressing each other, she realizes his weapon isn’t in the pile of clothing with hers, as it wasn’t with him on Exegol.

“Ben, where’s your saber?”

His dark eyes turn to her, bonfires in the penumbra of the world’s twilight. “It’s in the ocean. I don’t want it.”

Rey nods gently and offers him her hand. He takes it, and she turns to the doorway, willing it to reopen and take them back. Ben’s fingers tighten over hers, and the door fades open. The ocean and skies of the moon appear, placid under the same angle of the sun’s arc that they had left. 

The thud of their footsteps on the windswept durasteel is reassuring. 

“How will you get to Exegol?” Rey asks.

“I saw a hangar with docked fighters a few levels above the throne room.”

“Salvageable?”

He casts her a slight grin, one eyebrow barely raised, and nods at her, “I think so.”

She follows while he leads her towards the hangar, enjoying the first chance she’s had to simply watch him move. He is magnificent. The long limbs that carry his frame move alternatingly between elegant and heavy across the wreckage of scaffolds and paneling. They retrace the steps of their duel, making the two leaps across the gaps in decking together. He climbs with effortless strength, but often seems doubtful in how to bend and twist through his joints to fit into the needed spaces. Rey muffles a break of laughter when a foothold simply can’t support enough of him and he slips, just below the hangar’s docking platform. She scrambles easily above him and extends an arm to give him the purchase needed to make the last step of the climb. 

Hoisting him up by the wrist, they stand before a row of tumbled Imperial TIEs. A number still attached their docking frames look usable, and they move together to the closest. The hull and solar array wings are intact, and when Kylo swings into the cockpit the ion engines and navigation system stir for him.

While he’s checking the systems Rey considers the ship. It’s beautiful—and a rare prototype that boasts a hyperdrive. She had admired the sleek feel of Ben’s _Whisper_ in her hands and regrets that such a brilliant design had been use by the First Order and previously the Empire, for all the death the machines caused. Although, she considers with a curl of bitterness, too many lives had been taken by Resistance and Rebellion craft as well. War required two sides.

Satisfied that the ship will fly, Ben climbs back down to return to her. Pulling her to him, he strokes her back and face, fingers tracing her spine and winding around her waist. She leans in, letting all of her weight settle against him. The air that fills her lungs is crushing against the porous tissue with the fear of uncertainty. But the Force is serene, swelling around them in gentle waves that give her a sense of security. She has to trust it. It brought her here, to him. 

“I can’t leave you,” Ben finally says, whispering the words into the crown of her head. Dread flares around him, grinding, mimicked by his own breathing.

“You have to.”

“You’re certain?”

“Ben.” She sighs against the slope of his shoulder, searching for the words she needs. “You have to trust me. We’ll see each other again.”

He’s immobile against her, every muscle tensed with the quivering trepidation that combs against her mind. She reaches for his face, sliding her palm across his jaw before she kisses him. She urges every thought of bravery and hope she has through the kiss, pouring herself into him. Breathing him.

Loving him.

When she finally breaks away to regard him, Ben is flushed with some of the emotion she tried to pass through the bond. It’s done something to reassure him. His heart begins to beat with a fragile growth of certainty, moving in time with hers. 

“Trust me,” she tells him, one more time.

Ben nods, and she slowly steps backwards, reaching for his hand and holding it until the last step breaks the connection.

“I love you.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I have always loved you.” His eyes are brimming, and the heat of his tears burn on her own face as he turns back to the fighter. She watches him climb in and initiate the engines. He studies her from behind the window, and while looking back she feels herself shiver at the enormity of the worlds they will know together, one day.

She nods to him, _go,_ and Ben engages the thrusters. 

Rey pivots as she watches Ben lift and gain speed. Leaving her. She can feel in their bond his gnashing surge of pain, barely contained by the determination that allowed Kylo Ren to exist. It’s a parabola of emotion that grows in intensity, then eventually peaks and slowly fades with the physical distance that increases between them. At some point, perhaps when he launches into hyperspace, Ben’s signature finally slips below her skin and he is as present but ambient as her pulse.

Long past this point, when she can no longer find the patch of sky he disappeared into, she moves back to the edge of the hangar and descends the same way they had come.

The return to the doorway is blurred with a stream of tears. She holds her shoulders back tight against sobs—she has to believe that she will see him again. That he will be there on Lothal, waiting for her once she passes back through the portals. It will be such a small stretch of time until then. Nothing compared to the life of waiting she’s known. But rushing to this uncertain future is impossible; she can’t will herself to move in more than an unyielding, deliberate walk. She had raised herself alone in a graveyard, the days filled with corpses that had once lived or thought. She survived without human contact, without love then. She has the strength. And there are people now who are waiting for her to return to them. Finn among them. But she will have still lost an equal number of other lives that had touched her. 

And if she returns, it will be to a home that Ben cannot join her in. They won’t accept him—won’t understand.

They hadn’t seen into his mind, seen herself in him. Her reflection.

He will be her home. Her love.

Whoever will understand that will also be welcome. But they must understand.

Rey returns to the location where the doorway had opened. Far along the narrow stretch of framework that she had led and pushed him down with her saber. The door had opened just in front of a gun tower, she realizes. The same turbo canon she had collapsed beneath him at the end of their contest. Where she knew that she couldn’t keep swinging anymore. Where she had lost hope. And then where she had understood that the hope was not hers to own but meant for him. 

She had healed him, there—returned the life she had wrongfully taken. The vergence to the World Between Worlds was created where Leia had helped them shed the darkness that bound them to loss. And she knows, now, this is where he decided to turn.

She holds her hand up, considering her narrow, scavenger’s fingers. She can remember the heat soaking through his clothing. The rise and fall of his breaths as they transitioned from crudely shallow to heaving while she had healed him. 

She had meant to kill him with his own lightsaber. When he had found her in the throne room, the darkness that belonged to a demented Emperor had somehow seeped into her blood and with that darkness came a tributary of hatred. 

Despite the conditions of her childhood, she had learned over time how worthless hatred was in the desert. Hatred never sated her hunger or helped her find the hidden things that would allow her survival. Hate would only ever scrape hollow the hours of each cycle into something so painful that life lost the most basic sense of purpose. 

And she had someone she had needed to live for. Hate would never help her with that.

She would have loved Ben, and she would never be able to escape that. Even if he would never turn, as she had allowed herself to believe in the darkness that found her, his death would have only defeated both of them, defeated the potential of light his life could bring.

So, she had healed the wound she had made with his saber, and let the Force decide what should happen next.

Ben had never touched her with the saber. And she knows that he never would have. Every movement he ever made with the fragmented blade was just to bring himself closer to her with the only tool he had. 

She wants the crystal creating that blade. She’ll heal it like she had healed the Skywalker crystal. It’s why none of the others at Lothal would sing for her. Ben’s belongs to her.

Closing her eyes she feels for it, blocking out the sound of the sifting waves below to search their quiet depths for a song. 

It’s there. Faint and tremulous under the weight of the ocean, but it calls to her. An aria sounding like his heartbeat.

When she reaches and pulls for it, the weapon comes easily. Slipping through the water like a black bird in air, and alighting in her hand with an unexpected gentleness. She guides the components apart with the Force, and the crystal slides from the dark pieces of the hilt into her palm. It is warm, through wounded, and hums in tune with the Force around her. She places it in the fabric of her tunic, next to her heart, and turns back to where the doorway should be. 

It’s waiting for her.

And when Rey passes through the darkness, into the light on the other side, so is Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for making it this far with me. This is this vanilla cream cake I needed, and I hope it helped a little with the result of the Sequel Trilogy for you, too.  
> But there is so much incredible fan fiction out there, I think I could die happy knowing the beauty to be found from our Reylo writers. And I cannot compare, so I'm humbled to have been able to share my little wander.  
> Happy reading and MTFBWY!


	7. Eqilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hope" is the thing with feathers -  
> That perches in the soul -  
> And sings the tune without the words -  
> And never stops - at all -
> 
> And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -  
> And sore must be the storm -  
> That could abash the little Bird  
> That kept so many warm -
> 
> I've heard it in the chillest land -  
> And on the strangest Sea -  
> Yet - never - in Extremity,  
> It asked a crumb - of me.
> 
> _"Hope" is the thing with feathers_ by Emily Dickinson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a wee ending to cap things off.

The moss is like clouds beneath them, on this high point of the island that brushes the sky. Everything is so quiet, the summer sea calm and still, shining under the sun suspended in cloudless blue. 

Ben had hesitated when Rey wanted to bring him Ahch-To, knowing that Luke had been here. Knowing that it was the birthplace of the Jedi. But she had weaved his fingers into his and whispered against his throat that he would be safe here. And he would go anywhere she asked, really, without question.

Rey was a Jedi. Not the Jedi that had built the foundation for the Empire and then buried themselves beneath it, but a Jedi that resembled those who first came from this island. She deserved a home and from the things he glimpsed in her mind it was clear the Ahch-To was that home.

And to be honest, he would never escape the ghosts of his past wherever they were. No world could strip him clean and bare, absolve him.

But here, with Rey beside the ocean, things could be simple and clear.

She’s dozing with her head on his chest. It’s so small and light, with sunlight cascading through her hair as it rises and falls in time with his breathing. He reaches a hand to draw his fingers through the ends, and the loose strands spill like sand over the fabric of his sweater.

Everything has been so easy since she had brought him here. The crisp, salty air dissolving the dark horror of waiting for her after he staggered surreptitiously from Exegol with Rey’s lightsabers in his arms, wrapped in the clothes that remained once her body had disappeared. He had almost let himself follow her into death after that moment on the stone floor, succumb to the pain that couldn’t be measured by his near-fatal injuries. But a spark of hope in the darkness pulled him through space to the plains of Lothal, where one windy morning her warm hand slipped into his.

The sound of children laughing carries up the hill to them from where five little bodies are racing in the surf below, carefully watched by Finn and the droids. There are only five, so far. So much younger than he ever imagined he would know what to do with. But they look at him with a trust that he doesn’t deserve, even knowing who he had been. And he’d do anything to earn that trust.  
Still, somehow the kids seem to understand, having also come from the First Order, that this heritage will never truly a part of them. All they want is a home and love. Like Rey, they understand him. 

Rey had kept in contact with Finn after she brought Ben here to Ahch-To. Then, Finn had brought the first two children, Ana and Ken, almost a year after Exegol. They were orphans lost in the aftermath of the war. And they needed help with something inside them that they didn’t understand. 

Ken and Ana had been saved among thousands of others from a forsaken First Order induction camp several months after the war had ended. Jannah and Lando Calrissian had begun building an organization that recovered these camps once the last revolts of the war had dissolved. The reunification network that had been quickly developed by the Calrissian father and daughter spread across the galaxy, helping most of the stolen children return to their families who had surged in response to the broadcasts telling of lost children now found.

Almost every child had found the home they had been taken from. Support poured from hundreds of worlds to care for the remaining orphans, including Ken and Ana who were among the first to be left unclaimed. 

Finn had described them up to Rey on one visit. There was something unique about them that had caught his attention as he worked with Jannah. Rey had asked a few questions, and then offered a home here if the kids wanted it. Finn brought them soon after. And then another, older girl, and then two more boys, tiny, gentle twins. Finn stayed for good after bringing the boys, and Ben found that he didn’t mind. He had no claim on this place, and though he’d prefer to spend the rest of his days alone with Rey at the end of the universe, he’d accept anyone she’d welcomed. Especially these kids.

Now, only Finn and a small collection of people from Rey’s life knew where to find them.  
Chewie has been the first to come. He roared like a rathtar before sweeping Ben into a hug completely unsuitable between a Wookie military leader and freedom fighter of the Rebellion and the Supreme Leader of the First Order.  
Rey’s friends Rose Tico and Jannah would also visit, hand-in-hand, whenever they could slip away from the fledgling leadership roles they had filled in the political vacuum left by the war.  
And there were R2 and 3PO, who had whole-heartedly come to adore their adopted duties as caretakers and tutors for the children. D-O and BB-8 came too, but were mostly just playmates, leading the kids on chases through the winding trails that they carved into the rocky slopes of the island.  
Even the local Lanai had, after a brief week of muttering, completely embraced the children and spent every moment doting on them.  
Sometimes Finn would leave for a week to see Poe, who had returned to Yavin 4 where he presumably continued to be the best pilot of the dissolved Resistance, but the visits became less and less frequent and Finn would return to the children with increasingly more devotion gleaming in his eyes.

Finn, the deviant Stormtrooper, who had been there at the beginning of when his life as Kylo Ren had started to unravel. 

Finn still carried an undeniable distrust for Ben, but Ben couldn’t begrudge him for it. Still, the distance between them closed a little more every day.

As this time passed Finn was becoming something closer to a Jedi than a Stormtrooper. While he watched, Ben realized that for all of the destruction the Jedi and their philosophies had caused in his life, it was good to see Finn and Rey quietly begin to create this new interpretation of what the Jedi Order could be. Based on the first principles. And have the children there to be part of it.

Stirring, Rey moaned softly, a sweet rumble deep in her throat. Ben brushed a finger against her temple and then down along the arm wrapped around his ribcage. She pressed a kiss into his sternum. Then pushed herself up on an elbow to look down at him.

“Hey,” she breathed, smiling.

“Hey,” Ben answered, rising to kiss her mouth as she said it. She still tasted like sunlight, and he would never have enough of it. Most of the dark inside of him had been washed away with the tide or buried in a cold place under the island. She would ask for him to describe that darkness sometimes, retracing their lives by firelight inside their hut at night. But he knew that she needed to understand. To know both sides of the Force. So, he would tell her, and the words would float harmlessly into the fire to be reduced to weightless cinders.

And the next day would dawn with Rey curled against his chest and the voices of the kids fluttering up the hills.


End file.
